Hero For a Day
by dysprositos
Summary: Avengers/Incredible Hulk AU. No one ever sets out to cause the death of 17,000 people, but that's just the kind of luck that Bruce Banner has. Now he's stuck in the middle of a conspiracy with a group of the strangest people he's ever met.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey there, welcome to my nanowrimo project!**

**I've never done nanowrimo before, and decided I'd try writing fic instead of something original.**

**This is an AU, but I don't think it requires any particular explanation beyond what's in the story. It's rated T at this point, mostly to be safe, but that may change.**

**Thanks, as always, to my beta bequirk, who is pretty much the best.**

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><p>No one ever sets out to cause the deaths of 17,000 people, but that's just the kind of luck Bruce had.<p>

Despite what they were saying on the news, he hadn't _meant _to do it. He wasn't even entirely sure it was his fault at all, couldn't think how it possibly _could _be.

All he'd ever wanted to do was his job, and that's what he had been doing. Working on a project that was supposed to save lives.

_The road to hell is paved with good intentions_, he thought to himself, trudging along, one foot in front of the other. The road today seemed to be paved primarily with ice, which was fairly unpleasant, but the cold and miserable weather was the least of his concerns. More pressing to his mind was the newscast he'd heard on the radio earlier today. It seemed that Washington had finally managed to get their shit together enough to send out a hit team to find the man responsible for the disaster in Manhattan four days ago.

That man, in case it wasn't clear, was Bruce.

Sure, no one on the radio had used the phrase "hit team." They'd all said "multi-agency task force." But Bruce knew that any team sent to look for him would probably be aiming to do a lot more than just find him. He was being called a terrorist. After what everyone thought he'd done, he knew he'd be lucky if ever saw the inside of a jail cell. No, he expected that he'd find his brains blown out in a spectacular red fan against the white snow sometime in the next few days.

Really, he wasn't too upset by the idea, didn't find himself too much in opposition to it. After four days of living in the forest of northern New York state in the middle of January, he wasn't too far from dead anyway.

* * *

><p>Bruce Banner, aka Robert Bruce Banner, PhD, was a physicist. A nuclear physicist, specifically, though he'd spent the last several years working on a top secret project in biophysics. The project had been supervised by the Department of Defense, specifically by one General Thaddeus Ross. The project involved nanites with a military application.<p>

The model he'd developed were bacteria based, and Bruce and his team grew them in massive colonies. The test tubes and plates, several thousand of them, at this point, were kept in a locked freezer in a locked lab, and they were handled only by those who had been certified to do so and then only by someone wearing full protective gear.

The reason for this was, well, despite how long he'd been working on them, Bruce hadn't yet managed to get the nanites to do what he wanted them to do. In theory, they would amplify a soldier's metabolism, strength, speed, healing, and so on. Create a "supersoldier," as it were. In practice, though, exposure to the nanites had proven fatal in all cases. Several hundred dead mice attested to that. It was an issue, sure, but the DOD had seemingly unlimited funding and no one had ever suggested that Bruce needed to hurry it up a little or at the very least, stop murdering rodents en masse.

In some cases, the nanites caused immediate death, the mice bleeding profusely from the mouth and nose, as the nanites caused massive internal bleeding and hemorrhage. In other cases, the mice lasted longer, minutes, sometimes, or even an hour.

But they all died in the end.

Four days ago, that project had come to a sudden and surprising end when for some reason, his lab had...exploded. Actually, the whole building had. Bruce had been lucky; he'd been in the lobby, he'd managed to make it out before the whole thing came down, all 36 stories of it. Somehow, he'd been largely unscathed despite the rain of glass and steel beams.

That was the last time luck was in his favor.

He'd escaped the building. And somehow, he'd apparently managed to escape what 17,000 other people hadn't: the cloud of nanites from his lab that had descended on Manhattan.

Bruce had the blood of several hundred mice on his hands...and now, 17,000 dead New Yorkers.

But for some reason, he'd survived.

* * *

><p>Immediately post-explosion, Bruce hadn't been able figure out <em>why<em> he was still alive. Granted, his mind hadn't been the clearest—he'd been bruised and dazed, confused, terrified. But as he'd been stumbling away from the wreckage of the building, he'd seen people literally falling over dead in the street, the effects of the nanites in some cases instantaneous. Others simply bled from their noses, a sign of their imminent death. Even in his confused state, Bruce had known they were doomed, recognized the signs from what had happened to all of the mice.

He'd been just as exposed, if not more so, than those people, yet he was seemingly unaffected? It didn't make sense.

His first instinct after the building fell had been to go home. Probably not the most logical, but when he'd found himself surrounded by death and blood and mayhem, his ears ringing, a biting cold wind nipping at his face, all he'd wanted was his bed and about 48 hours of sleep. The emergency responders hadn't paid him any attention, as they'd been too busy trying to save who they could and dying themselves, and everyone at the scene had been too busy, too overwhelmed by the hordes of people falling dead that no one had thought to stop the white-coated scientist wandering around, and eventually away from, the catastrophe.

He'd gotten home, somehow, dazed and unaware of the looks he was getting on the subway, unaware of his neighbors' shocked expressions as they saw the dusty, grimy, bloody man limp up the stairs to his apartment. Bruce had immediately gotten into the shower where he stayed for almost an hour, just standing there, feeling somehow cold and hot at the same time.

When he'd gotten out of the shower, he'd turned on the television.

Every channel was showing the same thing. Every channel was covering the lab disaster, every channel showing the rapidly escalating death count. And every channel was looping a clip of General Ross stating clearly and concisely that the blame for this disaster, for the the thousands of dead citizens, could be laid solely at the feet of one Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, a bitter, angry man who wanted revenge for losing his research funding.

A terrorist, who'd blown up his lab as an attack on innocent Americans.

Strangely, Bruce didn't remember it happening that way. Not quite.

Had his nanites killed those people? Yes. There was no doubt about that.

The thought had sickened him as he realized it was true, and he'd thrown up on his shoes.

When he'd recovered, gasping, wiping bile off his chin, the death count had gone up by another 200 people and he'd had to struggle not to give in to the panic, the guilt.

He _wasn't_ a terrorist. He hadn't _attacked _anyone.

He was a bad man, yes, but not an evil one. A killer, but not a murderer.

Shaking his head, Bruce had tuned back into the news, just in time to see Ross say that they were looking for Dr. Banner's body. Probably, the General said, Banner had died in his violent attack, made it a suicide mission, but if not...when they found him...well. That was still a matter of speculation.

Bruce did not think, though, that the matter required much speculation. He thought it seemed very clear what was going to happen, and _then_ he panicked. He didn't stop to think, didn't stop to consider that the lab explosion made no sense, that Ross's statement was completely out of the blue. All he knew was that he was being blamed. Publicly. For intentionally killing 17,000 people.

They were going to kill him.

He needed to get out of the city _now _while everyone still thought he was dead, lying crushed under tons and tons of steel and concrete. That was his only hope for survival.

Bruce had packed as fast as he could, changing his clothes and dressing himself in layers and then throwing the rest of his warmest clothes into a bag with a radio, flashlight, and batteries. Then, he'd tossed in some blankets and matches and a water bottle. He'd stopped in the kitchen to grab what calorie-dense food he thought could survive the journey and then he was gone.

Getting out of the city had been easy. People were tuned into their phones, their tablets, whispering to each other in small groups. No one was paying close attention to the skittish man on the subway with his backpack, face buried in his own cell phone as he watched the news unfold.

As he watched the death count click up.

Bruce took the train north until he thought he was far enough away from Manhattan, then he disembarked and started heading north. He caught a bus, first, that took him to a small town. He stopped in a sporting goods store there to buy snowshoes, a map, and a compass—cursing himself for having to pay with credit—and then he turned his phone off. He was officially off the grid.

So he'd thought.

After that, Bruce had hitchhiked, thumb out and all, with a trucker who seemed to buy Bruce's hastily concocted story about wanting to 'find himself' in nature. In January.

Getting away from civilization was easy. Staying there, though, was not.

Bruce had never lived outside before. He'd never even gone camping. But he now found himself living outdoors in the middle of winter, and he discovered he was woefully unprepared. Not surprisingly, really, but definitely disheartening.

His plan had been to head north through the States, towards Canada, scavenging what food he could along the way, finding shelter where he could. Once he was in Canada, he could try to claim asylum and get this mess figured out, starting with _why _Ross had pinned the explosion on him.

Within a day Bruce realized that this plan was wildly optimistic.

Within two days, he realized that he was going to die in the woods.

Within three cold, miserable, hungry days, he was mostly okay with that.

So on day four, when he heard they were finally coming to look for him, all he felt was relief.

* * *

><p>At noon, Bruce stopped for "lunch." He found a small, sheltered hollow underneath a hill and cleared as much snow from the ground as he could before he sat down.<p>

His food supplies were dwindling rapidly. He hadn't packed much to begin with and he hadn't been able to replenish along the way, like he'd planned to do. Still, he had some peanut butter and crackers and he had melted snow in his water bottle. Nothing much, really, and his stomach protested when he made himself stop after five crackers in an attempt to ration what he had left.

To distract himself, Bruce pulled out his map. After a few minutes, he was able to work out more or less where he was, which was disappointing because he was still in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization. He was moving so _slowly_.

He sighed and pulled out his radio, hoping to check in on the news. Before he could turn it on, though, he heard voices.

Bruce's first thought was that he was hallucinating, that days of short rations and freezing temperatures had addled his brain. But then he realized the voices were talking about him.

"...cell signal is in this area, Clint, I told you that already," said a female voice, cast low, barely above a murmur.

"Are you sure? I _hate _this goddamn weather," a male voice groused, louder. "I'm freezing my ass—"

"Shh," said the first voice, harsh.

There was complete silence.

Bruce barely had time to register what was happening, to make the decision that he had to move and _now _before he heard a soft 'click' from the hill above him.

"Don't move," said the woman.

Immediately Bruce froze, half-crouched. Then he disobeyed and looked up, tilting his head back, and focusing immediately on the gun barrel that was pointed straight down between his eyes.

"Dr. Banner?" the man said. "Put your hands on your head and get on your knees."

Slowly, Bruce did as he was told, intimately aware of the gun pointed at the back of his head. Part of him was confused, stunned that he'd been found so quickly, but mostly he was tired.

And surprised that he hadn't been shot on sight.

"You wanna call this in?" The man—Clint—asked his partner.

"Yeah," she replied. "Cuff him, I'll get Coulson on the comm." To Bruce, she called, "My partner is coming down there. Make one wrong move and I'll put a bullet in your brain, do you understand?"

Bruce did. He nodded.

A moment later, he felt cold metal circling one wrist, then the other. The actions were swift, efficient, and once the cuffs were on, Bruce dropped his hands down behind his back. Only then did the agent step in front of him. Well, he shuffled—he was wearing snowshoes, though they looked way more fancy and high-tech than the ones Bruce had bought. He was also wearing some really intense-looking outdoor gear, including a face mask and goggles that obscured most of his face.

"I'm Agent Clint Barton, SHIELD. Up there is my partner Natasha Romanoff. Are you Dr. Robert Bruce Banner?"

Bruce thought that they should have established this before handcuffing him and shoving a gun in his face, but given the fact he was a 'terrorist,' he supposed he didn't blame them. "Yes."

"You're being detained for questioning regarding the incident of January 17th in New York City. Do you know what incident I'm referring to?"

Given the news coverage the event had received, Bruce didn't think there was anyone in creation who didn't know that. "Yes."

"Good. Our superior officers have authorized the use of deadly force if you resist. Are you going to resist?"

"No." Bruce didn't think he could resist even if he'd wanted to. He was cold, hungry, and exhausted. Getting arrested and _not _shot was the best thing that had happened to him in days. Maybe he'd be able to get this whole mess straightened out after all. It seemed like his luck was turning around.

Apparently satisfied, Barton called up to his partner, "Hey, Nat, do we have an extraction coming or what?"

"One hour, two miles due west of here," she replied.

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Barton muttered. He grabbed Bruce's elbow and hoisted him to his feet, supporting the extra weight effortlessly. "Come on, let's get going."

Together, they climbed the hill, and Bruce finally got a look at Barton's partner. She, too, was adorned in gear that mostly hid her features, though a few strands of bright red hair had escaped and were blowing around in the frigid wind. She was tucking her gun back into a holster at her hip when they emerged over the ridge, and she appraised Bruce with cool efficiency. "Dr. Banner. We're heading to an extraction point. It's going to be a bit of a walk. Do you think you can make it?"

The question took Bruce off guard momentarily, but then it clicked. He must look like hell. Four days without showering or shaving, almost no food, freezing wind in his face. To be honest, he felt like hell, too, but two more miles didn't sound insurmountable. "I think I'll make it."

She nodded. "Good. You'll walk in front of us. You try to run, we shoot you. You try to attack, we shoot you. You do anything other than walk in the direction we tell you to, we shoot you. Is that clear?"

Bruce cleared his throat. "Um. Crystal."

With that, they headed west.

The walk was very quiet. Barton and Romanoff spoke occasionally, but with the wind, Bruce couldn't make much out. Most of it sounded like Barton complaining about the weather.

Bruce took the time to try to remember what he knew about SHIELD. Sadly, it wasn't much. As far as government agencies went, they flew way under the radar. There were TV shows about the CIA and the FBI, even NCIS, but nothing like that existed about SHIELD. Most Americans didn't even know they existed. Bruce only did because he'd seen their logo on a purchase order and had gone digging, and he hadn't been able to find much. As far as Bruce remembered, they were an international organization that dealt primarily with the most dangerous people on Earth.

He wasn't happy to find himself in that category.

But given what Ross had said, had accused him of...it wasn't really a surprise.

The extraction point turned out to be a clearing in the woods, and when Bruce stepped out of the tree cover, he saw a black helicopter settled on top of the snow.

Behind him, he heard Barton say sharply, "Wait."

Then, "That isn't ours." He stepped forward.

Romanoff stepped forward, too, flanking Bruce. "Who is it? FBI?"

Barton shook his head once, roughly. "No. I don't know—"

A single gunshot rang out, clear in the cold, silent forest.

Bruce barely had time to think, _Well, so much for my luck turning around _before his world went black.

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><p>The blood was bright, bright red, a spectacular fan against the cold, frozen ground.<p>

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><p>Half an hour and four miles away, Bruce Banner opened his eyes and shivered, naked in the snow.<p>

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading! Chapter 2 is mostly written, should be forthcoming.<strong>

**Please review!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Welcome to chapter 2!**

**Thanks to my beta, bequirk, for being generally badass as usual.**

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><p>Agent Clint Barton, 12 year veteran field officer of SHIELD, who had previously been a street rat, a carnie, and an assassin, in that order, had seen some pretty strange things in his life.<p>

He thought he'd seen it all, actually, thought himself quite seasoned in the weirdness of the world. He figured he could write a lengthy book on the subject of What The Fuckery, no problem. He was an expert. He knew everything about everything, and nothing could surprise him.

So he'd thought.

Today, though, Clint reflected as the doctor shined a light in his eyes and took x-rays of his bruised face, he had realized how wrong he was.

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><p>Clint hated winter.<p>

When he had been eleven, he had spent the worst eight months of his life on the street in Chicago, scratching by day to day and trying not to die.

It was a difficult task on the best days. In the winter, it had become nearly insurmountable.

The first time the temperature dipped below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, he'd made the mistake of falling asleep in a doorway. He'd woken up in the hospital, and the doctors had been all "you're lucky to be alive, kid," and "why don't you go home," and "we've called social services, they're coming to bring you to a foster home until we find your parents."

At that, Clint had been out the door.

He wasn't interested in seeing his parents, was less interested in foster care. He'd been there, done that, gotten the fucking t-shirt.

Gotten the scars.

Clint hadn't made that mistake again, and when the mercury dipped low, he made it a point to get somewhere warm. Sometimes he broke into buildings, sometimes he went to a shelter if he thought he could get away with it, if he thought no one would pay too much notice to a scrawny kid huddled in a corner.

In the spring, tired of scraping to get by, he had joined the circus.

Literally.

After that, his life had still been pretty shitty, but he'd at least never had to spend another freezing night on the streets. Even doing hits in the third world, he could usually find a place to stay. Still, the experience had always lingered with him, manifesting as a vague distaste for being cold and outright loathing for the months between November and April.

Which was why, when his now-boss Agent Coulson had told him that Director Fury needed their team to head out of DC to northern New York state, Clint was _not _impressed.

Granted, the last several days had not been impressive in general.

On January 17th, some nutso mad scientist type had gone Timothy McVeigh on his lab in Manhattan. Brought the whole building down. Pretty bad, yeah, but it was made infinitely worse by the fact that Dr. Psycho had been working with some _seriously _biohazardous shit, and he'd basically sprayed downtown New York with it.

All told, between the explosion and the contamination, the eventual death toll had so far ticked up to around 17,000 people.

No one was really impressed with that.

For the first day, the news had reported that the scientist—Banner—had died in the explosion, but that apparently wasn't the case. Intel soon showed that he'd used his credit card at a sporting goods store in upstate New York hours after the incident; they even had him on camera. The story after that was that he hadn't even been on site at the time of the explosion. If he had been, he would be dead. Like the 17,000 other people.

But he was alive, and he needed to be taken down. So when Coulson told him that SHIELD had been given jurisdiction of the case, after days of jurisdictional volleyball, and Strike Team Delta bad been placed in charge of the retrieval mission, Clint felt pretty good about it. With a bit of luck, they'd bring the terrorist in, no problem, and justice would be served.

Finding Banner had been ridiculously easy, at least for SHIELD, who had access to tech most other agencies only dreamed about. Dr. Psycho had been smart enough to turn his phone off, but he hadn't ditched it anywhere. It was just a matter of tracing the signal.

Of course, SHIELD didn't want the American public to know that they _could _trace the cell signal of a nonoperative phone. They didn't want the American public to know about them at all, actually, so the mission was billed to the media as a multi-agency effort that was likely to take a few days. The less people knew about SHIELD the better, really; Clint had seen a _lot _of weird shit in his life, and a fair chunk of it had been while working for SHIELD. It was probably best if the average person didn't know what kind of stuff was out there.

Within two hours of getting the order that SHIELD was handling the retrieval, Fury had forwarded a set of coordinates along with the rest of a dossier to Coulson, who shared it with his team. Within another hour, Clint and his long time partner (and best friend) Natasha Romanoff were on a helicopter. Half an hour later, they'd been dropped in the forest as close to the coords as they could get, with a terse, "Call when you've got him, we'll pick you up."

Clint hoped it was sooner rather than later.

He hated winter.

Natasha, of course, loved winter. She was Russian, though, so it wasn't a surprise...Clint had just found it annoying that while he was muttering, cursing, and shivering, she was snowshoeing ahead of him with a grace and ease that he could never hope to match.

Probably all that dance training she'd had.

Still, annoying.

They'd finally reached the coordinates a bit before 10:00 AM. It was clear long before they got there, though, that Banner had been this way. His trail—that of an exhausted, novice snowshoer—was easy to spot. It was evident he was making slow progress, the trail weaving from side to side and, occasionally, showing signs that Banner had fallen over.

Nevertheless, he was gone. Banner might have spent the night there, but by the time Clint and Nat got there, he'd left. Unsurprising, but still annoying. Like this whole ordeal.

"He can't be far," Natasha had pointed out when Clint had grumbled. "He's clearly not in the physical condition to be out here. Snowshoeing isn't easy when you're well fed and rested, and he's probably neither by now."

Clint had conceded the point. "True. But...I'm cold."

Nat had just rolled her eyes at that. "We have his trail, it's just a matter of following it until we overcome him. Shouldn't take more than hour or so."

She was right, of course. She usually was.

* * *

><p>Taking Banner in had been...anticlimactic. He'd been cooperative, quiet. Probably because he was half starved and mostly frozen, but still. Clint had expected more from the man who'd killed 17,000 people.<p>

But then...Banner wasn't really a criminal mastermind, was he? The guy had kept his phone on him instead of ditching it. Didn't really speak to a particularly...savvy mindset. And the way he'd bolted to the woods with practically no supplies? More suicidal than anything.

Still, Clint had pushed those thoughts aside. The lack of resistance was a _good _thing. Clint didn't _want _to shoot him. He'd had enough of that in his life, thanks. If it happened, it happened, but on the whole he'd prefer if it _didn't._

They had two more miles to go before he had any hope at all of being warm, and shooting people always generated delays and _so much _paperwork.

Clint and Natasha had walked behind Banner, and Clint had resisted the urge to hurry him along. He'd seemed pretty confident that he could make it to the extraction point, but it soon became apparent that he certainly wasn't going to do so in record time. Their progress was slow. Arduous. Agonizing.

Still, they made it in a bit less than an hour, which was both good and bad; good, because they were done walking, bad because it meant they were going to have to wait for their helicopter.

Except...when they'd reached the edge of the tree cover, Clint had seen that there was a helicopter already parked there in the snow. It was turned off, just sitting there. Silent.

That immediately set off alarm bells. Distracted, he didn't immediately notice that Banner had stepped out from under the trees.

When he did notice, Clint barked out a sharp, "Wait." Banner stopped, and Clint narrowed his eyes, scanning the chopper. It was all wrong. Wrong shade of black, wrong model, wrong size. "That's not ours." He'd stepped forward, half to protect his charge, half to get a better look.

Natasha had followed suit. "Who is it? FBI?"

Clint shook his head. "No." He knew what equipment all the agencies used. This was unfamiliar. "I don't know—"

At that exact moment, a single gunshot had rung out; before either Clint or Natasha could move, Banner had flown backwards, the momentum of the bullet lodging itself in his brain carrying him with it.

The back of his head had exploded, blood and bone and brains fanning out against the snow, spraying both Clint and Natasha with a warm red mist.

That had broken the spell, and they had both hit the ground, Natasha reaching immediately for her comm link and Clint reaching immediately for his gun. He'd scanned the area quickly, looking for the sniper, mentally kicking himself for being so _stupid_ and not checking before.

He heard Natasha talking to someone—Coulson, probably, or someone back at base—saying that they'd been fired upon, but he was too busy trying to find the shooter to pay too close of attention.

In fact, his focus had only been broken by Banner standing back up and turning into a ten-foot-tall green monster.

* * *

><p>"...Could you repeat that last part, Agent Barton?" Phil Coulson asked in his blandest, calmest way, crossing his legs, trying to get comfortable in the medical bay chair.<p>

Clint was more than happy to do so. Adjusting the ice pack he was holding over the left side of his face, he said, "Banner stood up and turned into a 10-foot-tall green monster." He paused. "Or maybe he turned into a monster and _then _stood up."

Talking felt...weird.

Coulson nodded, apparently accepting of the retelling. Clint admired him for how calmly he was taking this—a lot of Clint's calmness had to do with the Norcos they'd given him for his broken zygomatic bone. Man, those things were amazing. He could barely even tell that his face was broken...or maybe he just didn't care...

"And after that?" Coulson prompted after a few minutes.

Clint focused his gaze back on his boss. "Sorry, what?"

Coulson nodded with something approaching a half smile. "What happened after Banner, er, transformed?"

"Well," Clint said frankly, "That part's a little blurry." He chuckled to himself. "Blurry? Do you get it? 'Cause my eye's all fucked up?" Immediately, he sobered. "Boss, my _eye _is all fucked up."

"I know, Barton," Coulson replied patiently, with the air of someone who had had this conversation already. In fact, he had; twice. "The vision issues should improve soon. It isn't permanent." Then, trying to get back on topic, "Do you remember what happened that caused the injury?"

"Um..." Truth be told, Clint really didn't. And he was still kind of worried about his vision. Distractedly, he answered, "I'm not sure. Did you ask Natasha?"

Coulson nodded again. "But given the situation, we wanted to corroborate her account with yours, just to check for any irregularities. Beyond the obvious."

"Ah," Clint said. "What does she say happened?" He adjusted his ice pack again and experimentally tried opening his mouth as far as he could. It hurt, so he immediately closed it again.

"She says he threw you into a tree. Face first."

Clint considered this, then shrugged. His memory was pretty blank on the matter. "If she says so." It certainly seemed plausible. The goggle-shaped bruises around his eyes and broken zygomatic bone seemed to indicate something like that had happened.

"Do you remember anything else?" Coulson asked.

Clint shook his head and regretted it immediately. Then he asked, "What happened with the helicopter? Who was it?"

Coulson stood up, shutting the folder he'd been writing in and capping his pen. "That, Barton, is what we'd all like to know." He opened the door to the room where Clint was recuperating. "Maybe Banner knows something."

* * *

><p>Dr. Elizabeth 'Betty' Ross, MD, PhD, was having a strange day.<p>

Working for SHIELD, most of her days were strange to some extent. The kind of research she usually did was strange. The kind of people she worked with were strange. Her day to day activities were, overall, strange. In fact, being the daughter of a general, her entire life had been pretty odd. She'd lived all over the world, had mingled with some of the most powerful people in the world, had attended Harvard and gotten her MD and PhD before she was 30, and now she worked at one of the most secret and secretive military organizations in the world doing research that she couldn't tell anyone about.

And even with all that considered, today was _still _strange.

After Dr. Banner's attack on New York, Betty had been tasked with trying to figure out if there was a cure, antidote, or vaccine for exposure to the nanites he'd developed.

Cleanup in New York was going excruciatingly slowly because no one could tell if it was safe to enter the exposed area. Search and rescue had gone into the area using hazmat suits at first and, later, a couple of them had been outfitted with an armor system that one of New York's tycoons—Tony Stark—had 'knocked together' in something like 36 hours. Still, even though the armor suits kept search and rescue safe from the nanites, and more suits were in production, exposure was still a possibility, and thus the top priority quest for some kind of protection.

Thanks to computerized databases, all of Banner's research hadn't been completely lost in the explosion, and Betty had been able to see exactly what he'd done. Within a few hours, she'd been able to see why he'd lost his funding—his research was going nowhere, the nanites fatal in every case of exposure. What had he expected? That the DOD would just keep funding his rodent genocide?

Unfortunately, Betty's progress didn't seem to be faring any better, largely _because_ of the fatality of the nanites. She'd received samples from the disaster site and she'd isolated the nanites, had managed to culture them. Doing so had been a major step forward, as it had illustrated that the nanites posed an ongoing threat (as they could continue reproducing themselves). Luckily, the bacteria Banner had chosen wasn't a particularly long lived one and could only live on its own for a matter of days.

Still, her research had shown that a massive decontamination effort was going to be needed. The bacteria couldn't live long on its own, but there was no telling what kind of stuff it had found to grow on in the rubble.

The decontamination effort couldn't begin until Betty had managed to find a cure.

So she worked. Unfortunately, Betty couldn't study the immune response to the nanites in non-living subjects, and that hindered her significantly. Betty did what she could with cell cultures and animal models, but soon her mouse death count had begun to rival Dr. Banner's.

Exposure to the nanites was, it seemed, universally fatal.

100% mortality.

So she was flummoxed when, at 9:08 AM on January 21st, she'd gotten a phone call about a "live specimen."

"What do you mean, 'live specimen'?" she'd asked. "A live specimen of _what_? How did you even get this number?"

The doctor, who worked at one of the city's hospitals, had been very vague. He said he'd gotten Betty's number from a contact he had at a university when he'd called to report what he'd found.

"What _did _you find?" Betty had asked, prodding him along.

That's where the doctor had gotten...shifty. The man, he said, had been pulled from the rubble of the collapsed building. Alive. He'd lived in the rubble for days. Had, in fact, remained alive for days after exposure, far, far longer than anyone else had yet. In fact, he wasn't only alive, he was looking...much better than he had before. They'd tested his blood, the doctor had said, and found no traces of the nanites at all. He was uncontaminated. But there were some other...irregularities with his blood work. It was probably best, the doctor had concluded, if Betty just saw for herself.

"Send him over, then," Betty had said, confused and intrigued.

And at 10:22 AM, one of Betty's assistants had escorted a young man into her office. He was tall, blond, and very...All American. He was carrying a very thick folder and, strangely, he was wearing hospital scrubs.

More importantly, though, he did not look at all like he had recently been pulled from a collapsed building. There wasn't a scratch on him, or a bruise, or anything.

"Hi," he'd said, offering her his hand. "I'm Steve. Rogers."

She'd shaken his hand. It was warm. He was, it seemed, very much alive. "Elizabeth Ross. Most people call me Betty." She'd gestured to one of the chairs. "Would you like to sit?"

He did.

"Can I get you anything?" Betty had asked. "You might be here for a while, I'm sorry to say. You're the first victim who..."

"Hasn't died?" Steve supplied. At Betty's nod, he'd added, "I don't mind. I'm happy to do what I can to help with...anything. Do what you need to do."

Betty had nodded again. "Thank you. Still, would you like a glass of water? Something to eat? I could send one of my assistants to your apartment for more comfortable clothing?"

At that, Steve had rubbed the back of his head. "I, uh, appreciate that ma'am, but I don't think any of my clothes are going to fit."

Confused, Betty had asked, "Why not?"

"Because," Steve had replied, "Before they pulled me out of that building, I was 10 inches shorter and..." he glanced down at himself, "Maybe 100 pounds lighter." He handed her the folder he'd been carrying. "My medical records."

She'd flipped the folder open, glancing at the first page. Then she'd glanced back at the man sitting in front of her. Back down at the paper. She'd furrowed her brow.

At his last doctor's appointment 2 months previously, Steve Rogers had been 27 years old and 5 feet, four inches tall. He had weighed 95 pounds and he had been an asthmatic. Now, while he was still 27 years old, he was over six feet tall and weighed at least 200 pounds, all of which seemed to be muscle.

That was...strange.

"You got...bigger," she'd said, for lack of something more pithy.

"Seems that way," he'd agreed, amiable.

Betty had sat down, then, and after a moment, she'd sent one of her assistants for coffee.

It wasn't a guarantee, but caffeine would _probably _help.

* * *

><p>Bruce looked around.<p>

He looked at the gray stone walls. The metal door. The security camera in the corner. The door.

He pulled at the chain that was linking his wrist to the table in front of him. The cuff chafed against his arm.

He looked at the door.

The door opened and a man stepped in.

"Hello Dr. Banner. I'm Agent Phil Coulson with SHIELD. It seems we have a bit of a situation, wouldn't you agree?

Bruce did.

* * *

><p>When he'd opened his eyes, the first thing he'd registered was the bright whiteness around him, the <em>painfully <em>bright whiteness.

Bruce had shut his eyes. It was then that he realized he was curled in a ball, shivering.

He was cold.

It was cold. Winter. The whiteness was snow.

He'd coughed, then rolled into a sitting position. Every bone and muscle and joint in his body ached, and it felt as if he'd dislocated everything that he could possibly dislocate. His head was killing him.

Grimacing, blinking against the light, he'd opened his eyes to survey the damage.

And he'd found...none. At least to his body. There was substantial damage to the forest around him, with trees shattered and huge indentations in the snow, as if something very, very large had been lying there.

Bruce had also found that he was naked. Completely. Even the handcuffs he'd been wearing were gone, as if they'd never been there. His glasses were gone, too, and everything was just a _little _blurry.

Unfortunately, the snowshoes he'd been wearing were gone, too, and when Bruce tried to stand, he'd sunk up past his knees in the snow.

It was _not _a pleasant sensation.

He'd managed to flop/crawl/flail until he was under a pine tree that had a bit of clear ground underneath. By then, he'd been shivering violently, teeth chattering so hard he'd thought he was going to shatter his teeth.

Once he was in his rudimentary shelter, out of the wind, he'd taken a moment to regroup. It had occurred to him that he had no idea what had happened or how he'd gotten here. He didn't know where 'here' was. His memory was perfectly clear up until he'd been shot, remembering even the pain, but it was completely blank thereafter.

Efforts to recall what had happened had only exacerbated his headache, so Bruce had abandoned that pretty quickly. He figured he'd find out soon enough, one way or another.

Or he'd freeze to death.

He was, he'd found, actually pretty disappointed that he was no longer in custody; the prospect of being warm and (probably) fed had been appealing, as much as being detained by the government, well, wasn't. Still, with the damage to the forest around him, Bruce figured it wouldn't be too long until someone—whether it was who had shot him, or SHIELD—found him.

He was right.

And, lucky for him (and wasn't it sad, what he had come to define as 'lucky'), it had been SHIELD.

This time, at least, he'd heard them coming, heard the helicopter flying overhead, first, and when the team—led by Agent Romanoff—appeared through the trees, he'd already been on his knees with his hands on his head.

Romanoff didn't handcuff him. She didn't get close enough.

She had approached cautiously, warily, gesturing for the rest of her team to stay back. She had tossed Bruce the bundle of clothes they'd brought. Once he'd dressed, from underwear to high-tech snow shoes, she'd told him that they were going to an extraction point.

No one had asked, that time, if Bruce was going to be any trouble.

He learned, later, that this was because they already knew he was.

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks for reading; please review!<strong>


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